Princess executed for eloping

A Saudi Arabian Princess and her husband
have been executed in public because she
eloped with a commoner. A Special
Correspondent reports

When Saudi Arabia issued a decree last summer banning
travel by unaccompanied women,
young Saudi Arabs bridled at what they believed was
an excess of conservative Islamic zeal on the part of
the ruling royal family.

Irritation over this measure has gradually changed to horrified
disbelief and then indignation among many Saudis and other Arabs
as word has gradually leaked out about the real reason for
ban - a tragic romance last year in the desert kingdom involving
the ultimately fatal bid of a Saudi princess to marry the man
she loved.

The 23-year-old Princess Misha was one of the 2,000
princesses belonging to the house of Saud. Her grandfather was
prince Muhammad Bin Adbul Aziz, the eldest surviving son of
Ibn Saud and senior prince of the Saudi royal family.

The house of Saud increasingly intermarries as a means of
protecting the family interest. It forbids its women to marry
outside the family or a closely associated line, like that of
the Sudeiris.

So when reports came back to Riyadh last summer of a romance in Beirut involving Princess Misha, the girl was swiftly summoned home
and told that she must marry her family's choice - a man her father's age.

Her own suitor, whom she had met while studying in the Lebanon,
was rejected by the family as a commoner,
even though he was the cousin of Saudi Arabia's
influential ambassador in Beirut, the former General Ali Shaar, who was Riyadh's
proconsul in the Arab pact which ended the Lebanese civil war.

The princess, rather then submit to the family's choice,
eloped with the young Shaar. They persuaded a sheikh to marry them and went to
ground at the Hotel Al-Attras in a seaside resort called The
Creek, north of Jedda.

There, last autumn, despite the travel ban imposed to
prevent their escape, the
young couple prepared to flee the country.

First, the princess staged a fake death by drowning,
leaving her clothes on the shore.
Then, disguised as a
man in Saudi robes, her hair cut short under the head-
cloth, the princess went to Jedda airport to board a
plane with a group of friends. Her husband was to travel
separately in the same plane.

But her identity was discovered when the passengers were
searched by security
guards before boarding the plane. They were both
arrested on a royal warrant.

Dragged before her grand-father, the head of her
branch of the royal family,
the girl pleaded for mercy
at least for her husband.

Traditionally a woman guilty of sexual offences is
punished by her own family
to cleanse their sense of family honour. In this case,
the royal family was also enforcing its own rules forbidding
mesalliance with commoners.
Prince Muhammad, twice passed over for the kingship because of his rather choleric
temperament and his drinking problem - sources of his
nickname, Muhammad Abu Shaarain (Muhammad of the

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Fatal love of a princess

(Continued from page 1)

Two Evils) - is a traditionalist who predictably turned a deaf ear to his granddaughter's appeals.

Saudi Arabia's supreme religious court under the Qadi refused to judge the case,
implicitly confirming the subsequent contention of many Saudis that Muslim law had not
been violated by the elopement, since the
couple had married.

King Khaled, the sole surviving full brother
of Prince Muhammad, refused to sign an execution order against the couple, but he did not
intervene to prevent his brother
from imposing his own form
of family discipline.

On Prince Muhammad's
orders, the couple were taken
to the bazaar in Jedda on
the following Friday midday
- the customary time and
place for the punishment of
criminals. Other Saudi princesses
were taken there to witness the spectacle.

The grandfather's retainers shot the princess
dead in front of her husband.

The husband was then beheaded, in a way that was
especially gruesome because
it was inflicted not by a Saudi executioner
used to wielding the special sword
but by the old prince's bodyguards.

The episode is in the first
place a personal tragedy, a
ghastly lapse in a society in
rapid transition, where social
changes which covered centuries
in Europe are taking place over a few
years.

It is not typical of Saudi
Arabia today and has shocked
even conservative supporters
of the royal family. But it
does illustrate the extraordinary
confusion created by
the ruling family's attempt to
modernise the country without
losing its grip on power or
alienating conservative
religious opinion.

The Saudi rulers, increasingly sophisticated
and influential in world finance and
politics, have used their oil
wealth to launch a vast plan
of economic and social development
which is bound to have a profound effect
on Saudi society. Yet the balance
of power between rivals within the ruling
family has meant that social liberalisation
at home has proceeded
at an erratic pace and political power-sharing
taken place hardly at all.

The Saudi rulers have, however, tolerated some improvements in the position of
women, especially in their
access to education, at a
relatively fast pace in Saudi terms.

Saudi women are still forbidden to drive a
car or appear unveiled in public. But
they are gaining ground in the kingdom
and their talents must one day be more fully
mobilised, if Saudi Arabia is
to manage its own oil wealth without excessive
reliance on foreigners.